Proudly Feminist, Proudly Bisexual, Proudly Atheist.

Yemisi Ilesanmi is a Nigerian woman, resident in UK. She holds a Masters of Law (LL.M) degree in Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights. She is a trade unionist, human rights activist, an author, a poet and sometimes moonlights as a plus size model.

She is a passionate campaigner for equal rights, social justice and poverty alleviation. Her debut book 'Freedom To Love For ALL: Homosexuality is Not Un-African' is available in paperback and kindle editions on Amazon (www.amazon.com/dp/1481864815).

In sometimes, what she thinks as a past life, she was-
- National Women leader/Assistant National Secretary, Nigeria Labour Party.
- Vice President, International Trade Union Congress
- Chairperson, ITUC Youth Committee
- International Labour Conference (ILC) Committee Member on Applications of Standards
- Founder/President, National Association of Nigerian Female Students

She is the founder and coordinator of the campaign group Nigerian LGBTIs in Diaspora Against Anti-Same Sex Laws.

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Order your sizzling copy of : Freedom To Love For ALL: Homosexuality is Not Un-African! Available in Paperback and kindle editions on Amazon.

This review is from: Freedom To Love For All: Homosexuality is not Un-African, (Paperback) Ms.Yemisi Ilesanmi manages to put together a brilliant piece of artwork full of eloquence, deep analytical skills and detailed references.This book breaks down stereotypes, single stories and farces by confronting hypocrisy, bigotry and ignorance with dignity, enlightenment and love. The reader becomes educated, motivated, outraged and empowered. By far one of the best books that covers LGBT rights in Africa, with an African voice. Highly recommended to students and scholars interested in gender studies, queer studies, African studies or Human Rights in general. Also very accessible to general public, in particular to persons committed to social change and the fight against discrimination in all its forms. - Miguel Obradors

Nigerians have suddenly woken up to the ills of child abuse because of an obscure part of the constitution. While we are all getting self righteous and indignant about children’s rights, let us also look at ways we are guilty of perpetrating child abuse. After all Child abuse comes in different colours, shapes and sizes.

Religion and child abuse:

Rape is never funny and pedophilia is nothing to joke about. It sure baffles me how people who condemn rape, who would normally freak out at the thought of a 54 year old man raping a 9 year old girl, could still praise and worship a pedophile prophet who did exactly that!

It seems being a catholic priest or an Islam prophet is a shield from being scorned at as a rapist and pedophile. And now, you can add being a Nigerian Senator or diligent follower of the Islamic faith to the list. Why the double standard? Even when dead, pedophiles graves should be spit on not worshiped in holy pilgrimages!

Senator Yerima imported the 13 year old daughter of his Egyptian gardener as wife. He married this child in the presence of his fellow senators in a lavish ceremony at the National Mosque in Abuja, a mosque built with my tax payers’ money. He used his religion to justify his depravity. He even threatened to sue the National Human Right Commission for infringing on his right to freely practice his religion.

The Pedophile is still in the National Assembly making laws for us. The irony is that this pedophile actually voted to criminalize consensual adult relationship between same sex people. He voted that gays be imprisoned for 14 years, while he goes home to rape his childbride. Surely, pedophiles like Senator Yerima should not be making laws for the country in the day while they go home to rape their under-aged, child-bride in the night. What a sick society! ‪#‎ChildNotBride. Like Prophet, like Imam, like Senator. Prophet Mohammed did make a good head of the pedophile ring! If he were alive, I wonder how many of his ‘faithful’ followers would scream ‪#‎ChildNotBride!

Your dear spiritual father whom you fondly call ‘Daddy Oyedepo’ slapped a young girl during a church service, all you did was applaud him and make excuses for him while quoting spuriously from your precious holy book, the bible. You heard about an almost irrelevant section of the constitution, and suddenly you turned into a child right activist, you come online screaming child abuse and signing as many #ChildNotBride petitions as you can, yet you attend church services where you watch nonchalantly and sometimes gleefully, as children are abused in the name of your God.

If you still celebrate Bishop Oyedepo, you are also guilty of encouraging child abuse. When you scream #ChildNotBride, just remember that child abuse comes in different colours, shape and sizes. Your religion or culture is not an excuse to maltreat children. There is NO EXCUSE FOR CHILD ABUSE. #ChildNotWitch #ChildNotBride #ChildNotSlave!

You take in an impoverished child under the pretense of sending the child to school, you turned him/her into your house help. The child, now house-help, does all your household tasks and looks after your children who are probably even older, in exchange for the measly meals you feed her, a roof over her head and for that poor excuse of a school you enrolled her in. Yet, you come online to scream “No to child abuse”. In self-righteous indignation, you sign all the #ChildNotBride petitions. Are you not also guilty of child abuse? Remove the log in your eyes, take a hard look at yourself in the mirror and try to change your ways. #ChildNotSlave #ChildNotHousehelp #ChildNotWitch

The hypocrites will be the first to attend church on Sundays. They will even make the poor child carry their entire luggage including their bible and gifts for their pastors! At every service, they also ask their pastors to beat the demons out of those poor children, after all children of the poor are always witches, because, well, they made their parents poor. It is even worse for them if they are orphans, because, well they must have used witchcraft to kill their parents.

You should make sure you are not a perpetrator of child abuse in your own home before you turn into a child rights activist online!

On S29 (4)b

It is said that you can’t build something on nothing and expect it to stay, it will collapse. And definitely in law, you can’t build your case on a weak foundation, it will collapse. The S29(4)b that is generating this controversy does not say a married woman is deemed an adult, it says a married woman even if below 18 can renounce her Nigerian citizenship. It also further states that the section can only be used to apply to citizenship. Really, this is easy to look up in the constitution, which btw, is also available online.

This particular section has been in the constitution since 1999, Yerima and all other pedophiles do not need that section before they can take a 2 year old girl as wife. There are state laws and Marriage Acts that unfortunately make allowances for them to marry a child.

The one valid legal challenge that can be brought against S29 (4)b of Nigerian constitution is a case of gender discrimination. A married boy under 18 can sue for gender discrimination because according to that section, a married girl of his age and status can enjoy the privilege of renouncing her citizenship, while he cannot. Therefore this section should be repealed because citizenship should be gender neutral.

Even if this section is removed today, Nigerians should not stop the #childnotbride protest. We should direct the protest to the real sections of Nigerian laws that actually allow child marriage. Ignorance is not an excuse to keep beating a dead horse. Sec 29(4)b is not a covert sanction of child marriage. And why even waste energy to fight a supposedly covert law when there are EXPLICIT laws that condone child marriage?

If Nigerians have just suddenly woken up to fight child abuses at least they should get their facts right. What is the essence of directing your energy at a law that does not even mean what you accuse it of meaning when there are laws that mean exactly what you are fighting against? Why not fight to change those laws? Is it that it is convenient to be all emotional about it because pedophiles like Senator Sani Yerima are involved, plus it has a tone of the North vs the west, Christianity vs Islam?

Facts are precious, certainly more precious than sentiments. Nigerians hardly act for long, at least if we are going to get all worked up about this, it is better to get the facts right so the energy can be channeled towards changing the real laws that sanctions child marriage. I am all for fact and evidence, there is no point crying wolf where there is none and as in this case, there is no point screaming at a sheep when the real wolves eat your children. S29 (4)b is not even a sheep, the many state laws are the wolves and they are not even hiding covertly in any sheep clothing, they are explicitly blatant in their intentions. So why misdirect the protest?

I say the real protest is the separation of religion and state. My constitution is not your religious book; get your Quran and bible out of my state laws and policies! Stop quoting your bible or Quran to justify a bill or law on the floor of the national assembly. Don’t cite bible or Quran verses in a courtroom, the court is not your church or mosque! Your religion is not my law. Nigeria is a secular state. Let us protest against the Nigerian membership of Organisation of Islamic countries. It is time to scream #NIGERIA IS NOT AN ISLAMIC COUNTRY!

Stop using tax payers’ money to send people to pilgrimages, if they want to go to Jerusalem or Mount Arafat, let them fucking use their own money! Stop using my tax payers’ money for your religious bullshit. And stop using the tax payers’ money to pay pedophiles like Yerima. Senator Pedophile Yerima belongs in jail not in the chambers making laws for Nigeria!

Now, that is the real protest. Nigerians, get angry enough to demand a real change!

Comments

When I started to live in Nigeria in the seventies, we needed a househelper / Nanny, and the Nigerian women around us suggested to go to the West (Yorubaland) and find a child in the village, give the mother some old lappa, maybe a handbag and some slippers and promise to send the kid to school and feed the kid and cloth him/her — I did not like the idea and of course, I did not follow that advice. But in the following years I saw such kids in Nigerian households, when I was visiting and was shocked to see f.e. a boy of seven standing in the midday-sunshine on one leg — punishment! The poor boy had broken a plate while working in the kitchen . I raised a hell of alarm and protest and was told that this is just normal …. a kid of seven years!!!!! He was one of those stolen kids from a village, and his master was a high official in a ministry and his wife a teacher. Imagine !! Child abuse is very very bad and has to stop !!!

@veronika amaechi -- It breaks my heart to say that what you just described is ‘normal’ in Nigeria. Nigerians turn the children of their poor relatives into house-helps. They visit the village to go shopping for kids to bring back to the city with them as cheap labour. Even the poor parents of those kids threat the persons taking the children off their hands and to the big city, like their ‘Messiahs’. And those awful corporal punishment in the name of discipline makes me want to weep and pluck out the eyes of those perpetrators!
So much needs to be done to protect the African child from child abuse. Education is one major key to making a lasting change.

Well, one thing we have to note is that Africa especially NIgeria is a developing country, and most times this under-age thing is done due to poverty and approval of the parent. Last month i was shocked to learn that in Ibadan some police men caught a young girl ( house maid) and too her to her masters. The master were interrrogated throuroughly and they sought the parents of this lady far away in Cotonou. This parents are the No. 1 problem because the child works and get bastardize yet the get paid wherever they are. SO what the police did was to Insist an account was opened for the young lady and her money be paid into the account untill shes old enough to do whatever with her money. I think this was highly commendable, but to say the lady be sent back , would never yield any positive result. Poverty is not a good thing my sister, it makes people do extreme things. And this is not only in Africa but in all regions of the world suffering from Under-development. I live in the USA and in as much as they fight for their child in this western part and do a lot of child -- law, i dont think it can work 100% in Nigeria, cos my sister Poverty is really a disease.. and until, things begin to take shape, before we can over-come the war. And as for the shameless senator, i guess he has bitten more than he can chew this time. God help him get out of this, i pray his case would be made like “my oga at the top” and people start making tee-shirts that advise the public against the ills of child marriage.
Lastly, do not forget that NIgeria is also a religious country and religious issues are taking with so much care, not because we cant dare them… but because…. when you sit somewhere far and cos a little trouble , the people that gonna suffer this might not be known to you. Just a little comment cant claim loss of hundreds of live, so you might wanna be more careful. Thanks for your boldness and fact. We hope to see more of you in the coming days…

Adebanjo, surely you can see that any religion that condones child abuse is not divinely inspired. It can only be the invention of men with the vilest of minds. I do understand the pressures that poverty puts on people, but the solution is not selling your children into slavery. That is exactly what the Jesus of the New Testament preached against -- better to live without sex than to sell the children you say you love into slavery! I do not care what the child molester Mohammed said because he was a pervert who invented a religion to justify his sick need to rape young girls. What developing countries need is education and access to contraception, not poor people to produce more child slaves!

I did not know that about the prophet Mohammed. If somebody (religious leader or not) wanted to marry my six year old child, I think I would punch them in the face a few times. I’m not an islamophobe, but I’d like to know what Muslims think about this. This beats out the forty year old Joseph marrying the Virgin Mary when she was fourteen, and I always thought that was pretty bad, too.

My mother used to be “help” for her extended family when she was a kid. She did everything for them. My grandmother had just immigrated to America, and they weren’t allowed to come over all at once as a family. My grandmother was pretty upset when she found out about it and expedited the immigration process for my mom.

Religion is just something some asshole came up with while trying to explain to his wives and his sisters why they should have to “obey” him and do all his nasty dishes. Best religion so far is the Sikh religion, because it believes in the equality of all human beings (men and women), but I am Agnostic, because it doesn’t require me to say I know stuff that I do not know.

I sincerely don’t blame you Yemisi, I know you dont have the slightest idea of the magnitude of what you are saying with regards the topic and doing all you can to ridicule the prophet and even stating that his grave be spat on. I can just assure you, you have crossed the line big time! How dare you Call prophet Muhammad (May the Peace and Blessing of Allah be Upon Him) what you did, Yemisi, Yemisi you dont have to bebe careful, No average Muslim will see this video of yours and will not wish he/she will be part of your adequate punishment. How insensitive are you? How many lives has Nigeria as a country lost on occasions of such gross magnitude? You claim to be an activist for human right but use your stupid tongue and accent to try and to spark violence in our country. You are already a failure, and I CAN ASSURE YOU, you have made a video that will Hunt you for the rest of your life.

In Nigeria you have freedom of speech but we respect the integrity of our religions and whether you like it or not, we are religious and moral people and will stay strong and united.

But for your slander against the prophet Muhammad, unless you take down dis video immediately, It might be the cause of your death anywhere you are in this world. I am only trying to advise here but let me inform you that any slander on the Prophet Muhammad carries the death penalty in the Islamic Law, I can assure you One Million and One Muslims are there ready to carry out this punishment without thinking, Yemisi. I urge you to as a matter of urgency revoke your statements and take down the video you did that slanders the Prophet of Islam or else I sincerely petty you when Muslims come across this taboo of your towards the Prophet of Islam. I will love to advise you that while you try to be a vocal critic of the political-human rights violations, please, and please, leave the Islamic OR any religious section out of your wordings. This might spare you for us to hear more from you and enable you promote your guy rights and so on.

Finally, I beg you in the name of God Almighty, bring down the video and revoke your statement against the prophet. But wait a minute, did you not see or heard what happen in Bangazi in Libya with regards slander on the Prophet? How about the This Day Crisis in Nigeria few years ago, The global rage on the same matter? No now Yemisi, do something and please do it fast. Please.

In fact I guess the best thing to do is to report you the the law enforcement agents of the country. To look into what you are about the create in our dear country currently battling with security challenges from all directions. You must have thought slamming on the Prophet Muhammad will help get sympathy for your cause, but sorry, that is too sensitive for us. We respect ourselves and dignify our respective religions, and that, you cannot deprive us of.

The security agencies must do something about your video statements and if possible charge you to court for your propagation of violence via social networks.

@YUSUF- I allowed your last comment to go through simply for its comedy value and also to serve as documented evidence of the stupidity of so many religious believers, especially Nigerian religious believers. You are so woefully ignorant; it would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. Go get a life.

Yemisi, i believe you are a product of a broken home who was brought on the street and you must have been a victim of many jilt by men because u sound more like someone who lacks all forms of good moral upbringing. if not how can u stay somewhere and promote violent in Nigeria, Knowing fully well how sensitive religious Issue can be in this part of the world. Do you know how many lives have gone because of un guided utterances like your’s. Please save us another religious crisis, that could come up as a result of Ignorants like you getting in touch with your kind of comment. We are still trying to get out of the troubles of your colleague in ignorance boko haram, you people are definitely of the same bunch, Islamic ignorance. Any way as an atheist u have nothing to fear apart from to wait for the time you will die and go to rot in hell for eternity and mark if you incite more crisis in Nigeria through your utterances the blood of the victims will be on your hands and head. please if u want to know about Islam lets talk and not instigate people into violence,

@msa Oh Shut up.. just STFU. I am not a fan of ignoramuses., why on earth would I want to engage in a debate with someone who is in denial about the words in his ‘unholy’ book and who denies the pedophilia actions of his war mongering pedophilia Prophet?

You sound like you are about to piss your pants because i dared call attention to the atrocities of your revered Prophets. Go home boy, this is not a place for you to hang out. My time is too precious to engage with you, therefore you are now relegated to the trash can.

With all due respect Yemisi (though you don’t give any, i’ll atleast respect your age and that your still God’s creation though presently the devils vessel nonetheless-if your really an atheist, you shouldn’t be offended by that statement but i’m sure you are, that’s your conscious my dear, the one that God gave us all :)). I see that your a wounded female with many questions which you seek to answer with human understanding that only gets one so far. Please don’t rely on the answers to be from this world or the people in it but from the God of Israel himself. The very same Holy scriptures you mock are living words from the mouth of God o (The Holy Bible). Every breath you breath is from our heavenly master but for how long do you think he will allow you to use it to mock him? What Bishop Oyedapo did was appalling to say the least especially where as Christians we are told to turn the other cheek not to be the one slapping but his aggression came from the pride, arrogance and ignorance that many Nigerians have, including yourself really. Real followers of Christ are humble, meek, gentle, loving, enduring etc just that the flesh can be weak, some give in to anger, some to lust etc. Please don’t judge the faith (not religion, but faith) by the people who claim to uphold it. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23. Only Christ was perfect and he is the WAY, the truth and the life, following man will only lead one astray. There’s no other way to God except through him (Yahusha). You clearly have some sort of belief in the supernatural as you talk about the things you felt you were in a past life. Simply know this, the church is indeed in a state but God is still God and in control always, he loves you i.e why your still among the living despite your evident rebellion against him and his laws but he wants you to repent and give your life to him. It’s not where your coming from but where your going Yemisi. Mary Magdalene was an ex prostitute but turned out to be one of the first people that Christ appeared to after his resurrection, she abandoned her old ways, gave her life to Christ and walked with him and in his ways. With a heart of willingness, ask Christ to come into your life and the spirit of God to guide you to his truths and God-willing, you will experience his presence and learn of his saving grace. I KNOW God is real Yemisi, i can testify, it’s not what i was told but what I’ve witnessed. Christ graced this very same earth and died to save us from the wages of sin (death, as in perishing in hell) and the Spirit of God grieves bitterly when people like you reject him. You’ll never know what it feels like to love someone unconditionally and all they do is hurt you, disregard you, even turn against you. If you did, Yemisi, you wont be doing what your doing.
On the issue of same sex acceptance in Nigeria- “What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, WHO is against us?” Romans 8:31. God’s WILL will be done. May God bless you & may you have a blissful new year.

Agree with you and thought you might like to see something I came across while searching for punishment for pedophiles. Found this in a far right Frontpagemag.com piece. “Fawzan concludes his fatwa with a warning: “It behooves those who call for setting a minimum age for marriage to fear Allah and not contradict his Sharia, or try to legislate things Allah did not permit. For laws are Allah’s province; and legislation is his excusive right, to be shared by none other. And among these are the rules governing marriage.”

Fawzan, of course, is not the first to insist on the legitimacy of pedophilia in Islam. Even the former grand mufti of Saudi Arabia supported “child-marriage,” since “the Koran and Sunna document it.”

Nor is this just some theoretic, theological point; the lives of many young girls are being destroyed because of this ruling. Recall, for instance, the 13-year-old girl who died while her much older husband was copulating with her (it was later revealed that, due to her reluctance, he was tying her up and “raping” her—as if there is another way to describe sex with children); or the 12-year-old who died giving birth to a stillborn; or the 10-year-old who made headlines by hiding out from her 80-year-old “husband.”

Then there are the countless anonymous girls who do nothing to warrant any media attention—such as die—and have learned to live with their elderly husbands pawing at them, like, no doubt, the girl who married Islam’s most popular cleric, Yusuf Qaradawi, when she was 14.

What do we make of the fact that it is always Islam’s religious, authoritative voices—not aberrant voices, not “terrorists,” “extremists,” or any other euphemism coined for the occasion—that are constantly demonstrating Sharia’s savageries? Weeks before this fatwa, a female politician and activist in Kuwait called for institutionalizing sex-slavery (recommending that Muslims buy and sell female Russian captives from the Chechnya war); a popular Egyptian preacher not only said the same thing, but added that the solution to Islam’s poverty is to go on jihad and plunder the lives and possessions of infidels.

Sounds odd? Perhaps; but it is perfectly consistent. After all, distilled and in the eyes of the non-believer, Sharia law is nothing less than a legal system built atop the words and deeds of a 7th century Arab, whose behavior—from pedophilia and sex-slavery to war mongering and plundering—was very much that of a 7th century Arab. Having enticed or enslaved his contemporaries into following him, his teachings continue to entice and enslave their descendants; and, now as then, it is always the innocent who suffer.”

This fatwa re: sharia law, because of the refusal to set a minimum age for marriage leaves all followers of Islam, even the devout, well minded, benevolent ones that most would consider good people, mired in the centuries ago practices not just of Islam but also in Christianity of marrying off children to insure their virginal purity. Only with the education of women, and equal rights of women, and laws that made us no longer the property of men were we able to have any choice in the matter. With these changes, and of course birth control came increasing women in the workforce, the decision whether or not to marry, the increased age at first childbirth and the increasing age at the time of marriage. Keep up your good works. Jill, Nashville, TN

The whole premise of Islam is based on antiquated 7th century beliefs. As you said, the most important thing is the separation of church and state, and to try to prevent the legislation of beliefs based on religions. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that although each one has the right to his or her beliefs, they do not have the right to determine those of anyone else?